Sunday, 31 January 2010

Unfestive conclusion

So, a bathetic ending to the pathetic fallacy of LMYE's by now distinctly unFestive 50: a companion to our 20 labelsof 2009 & top 10 sources of music discovery* in the form of our 20 artists of the year. Plus, given the discomfort of picking out an arbitrarily small group when LMYE exists to highlight all the less obvious music we love, an inevitable hedge: 10 more 'emerging' artists whose excellence we twigged during the year (often years too late, but anyway...).

Note that, apart from their inspired music, this list celebrates artists who typically cranked up their impact through other initiatives & efforts - running a cutting-edge label (Deupree, Sprinkles), creating compelling music on a new platform like the iPhone (Scanner), delivering genius mixes/remixes (English, KMS, Klimek, Sprinkles), collaborating far & wide (Baker, TRR), using 'free' creatively (Klimek, LJK, Monolake, Willits) - &/or sometimes just by the power of their example (The Necks' decade-plus of collective improvisation, Basinski's pioneering, Celer's fecundity, Erstlaub & Skelton's single-mindedness...). *not including blogs like this one that mainly deal in commercial releasesPost features an exclusive LMYE hack of extracts of DJ Sprinkles' new Masturjakor. More tracks, hacks & profiles/rationales of the top 20 to follow in, er, due course. No, really...